Think back to 1987. “The Cosby Show” was No. 1, the stultifying “Growing Pains” was in the top 10. “Family Ties” was the closest these saccharine upscale fantasies came to edgy. Then “Married …” came along, a breath of foul air in a roomful of Pine Sol. Consider paterfamilias Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill): a shoe salesman one rung below Willy Loman on the all-time-loser ladder. The only thing his wife, Peg (Katey Sagal), Hoovers is TV and bonbons. Kelly (Christina Applegate), their teenage daughter, is an overripe nymphet, younger brother Bud (David Faustino) an aspiring pervert. They made nuclear waste of the nuclear family. Many critics raved. “Roaringly amusing,” said USA Today. “Cleverly written,” praised the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times held its nose but gave the new anti-sitcom credit for trying to “bring its audience closer to what’s really going on in the American home.” That audience gratefully made “Married …” Fox’s first hit. Two years later Michigan housewife Terry Rakolta crusaded against the show’s lewdness. Ratings soared.
More screwed-up working-class TV families followed: “Roseanne,” “The Simpsons.” Long before white trash was chic, Peg teetered around the house in “do-me” pumps and Kmart couturea “Jerry Springer” guest waiting to happen. “We tried to take traditional sitcom clichs and subvert them,” says Michael Moye, who created the show with Ron Leavitt, his old writing partner from “The Jeffersons.” Instead of a father who knows best, they came up with one who lies and smells bad. A central running joke is Al’s revulsion at Peg’s sexual advances. His only consolation is a men’s magazine called Big ‘Uns, devoted to the kind of women S. J. Perelman once described as “balloon smugglers.” As Man at His Worst, Al predates the craven George Costanza from “Seinfeld.” His expression is a put-upon perma-wince. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. I was just thinking of killing myself,” he moans in the pilot. Probably the best of the show’s 200-plus episodes is a parody of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with the late Sam Kinison as Al’s guardian angel. In a reversal of the Jimmy Stewart scenario, Al sees how happy his family would have been had he never been born. He can’t allow it, bellowing “I want to live!” so they can be reunited in misery once again. The scene is the exact opposite of what’s cynically known among sitcom writers as the MOS, or “Moment of S-.” That’s the cloying denouement when a character experiences some maudlin epiphany that inevitably results in hugging. It’s how Emmy Awards are won.
“Married …” has never won an Emmy. This is the source of some bitterness. “Like those guys are funnier than me!” rages the ordinarily soft-spoken O’Neill, who was a respected theater guy before he became Al Bundy. “I’m not playing myself. I’m doing a f-ing character! It’s called acting!” O’Neill thinks they get snubbed because the show’s not “hip enough” or “P.C. enough.” Ironically, it is both. Moye is black, Leavitt Jewish–a partnership almost unheard of in Hollywood. Amanda Bearse, who plays the Bundys’ repressed Yuppie neighbor, is one of Hollywood’s few “out” lesbians. Despite its sexist image, the show has employed women directors and writers from the start. And it has a Tarantino-ish affinity for cheesy pop icons. Tina Louise, the Village People and Gary Coleman have all done cameos. It doesn’t get hipper than that.
Would “Married …” get on the air now? Doubtful. Fox isn’t the brash upstart it once was. The head of the network is a former schoolteacher committed to quality. His minions send notes asking the “Married …” writers to tone down the cleavage. Next they’ll be asking Al to take his hand out of his pants.
